Song plugger

A song plugger or song demonstrator was a vocalist or piano player employed by department and music stores and song publishers in the early 20th century to promote and help sell new sheet music, which is how hits were advertised before quality recordings were widely available. Music publisher Frank Harding has been credited with innovating the sales method.[1] Typically, the pianist sat on the mezzanine level of a store and played whatever music was sent up to him by the clerk of the store selling the sheet music. Patrons could select any title, have it delivered to the song plugger, and get a preview of the tune before buying it.

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, those who worked in department and music stores were most often known as "song demonstrators", while those who worked directly for music publishers were called "song pluggers."

Later, the term was used to describe individuals who would pitch new music to performers, with The New York Times describing such examples as Freddy Bienstock performing a job in which he was "pitching new material to bandleaders and singers".[3] In 1952 Ernest Havemann wrote:

There are about 600 song-pluggers in the U.S.; they have their own union; they are powerful enough to bar all outsiders; and they command fees up to $35,000 a year (worth $322,544 today) plus unlimited expense accounts. Their job is to persuade the record companies to use songs, put out by their publishing houses, and the radio station disk jockeys to play the records."[4]

Song plugging remains an important part of the industry. Record labels and managers will actively search for songs that their artist can record, release and perform, especially those who don't write their own material.

1.
Frank Harding
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Frank Harding was a Tin Pan Alley music publisher, who was credited with creating the method of selling music called plugging. Harding paid singers to sing his songs in shops and beer halls to get them known. He was active from the 1880s through the 1920s and he published music that he wrote and also bought it from other songwriters. Stories about him say that he traded beer for songs and that he won songs in games of poker, another of his business practices was to charge performers to have their portrait printed on sheet music. Then he gave them the music to hand out as they wished. He sold his business to salesman Edward B, marks, who became a major figure in Tin Pan Alley publishers. Marks is now an imprint of Carlin America

2.
Mezzanine (architecture)
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A mezzanine is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below. Mezzanines may serve a variety of functions. Industrial mezzanines, such as used in warehouses, may be temporary or semi-permanent structures. A mezzanine is a floor in a building which is open to the floor below. It is placed halfway up the wall on a floor which has a ceiling at least twice as high as a floor with minimum height, a mezzanine does not count as one of the floors in a building, and generally does not count in determining maximum floorspace. The International Building Code permits a mezzanine to have as much as one-third of the space of the floor below. Local building codes may vary somewhat from this standard, a space may have more than one mezzanine, as long as the sum total of floor space of all the mezzanines is not greater than one-third the floor space of the complete floor below. Mezzanines help to make a high-ceilinged space feel more personal and less vast, mezzanines, however, may have lower-than-normal ceilings due to their location. The term mezzanine does not imply a function, as mezzanines can be used for an array of purposes. Mezzanines are commonly used in Modern architecture, which places an emphasis on light. In industrial settings, mezzanines may be installed in high-ceilinged spaces such as warehouses and these semi-permanent structures are usually free-standing, can be dismantled and relocated, and are sold commercially. Industrial mezzanine structures can be supported by steel columns and elements. Depending on the span and the run of the mezzanine, different materials may be used for the mezzanines deck, some industrial mezzanines may also include enclosed, paneled office space on their upper levels. Reports suggest that the amount of steel required can be reduced by up to 35%, an architect is sometimes hired to help determine whether the floor of the building can support a mezzanine, and to design the appropriate mezzanine. Structural Wood Design, A Practice-Oriented Approach, the Architects Studio Companion, Rules of Thumb for Preliminary Design. Coates, Michael, Brooker, Graeme, Stone, Sally, the Visual Dictionary of Interior Architecture and Design. Buildings for Industrial Storage and Distribution, the Mingqi Pottery Buildings of Han Dynasty China,206 BC-AD220, Architectural Representations and Represented Architecture. Structure of the Ordinary, Form and Control in the Built Environment, harris, Cyril M. Illustrated Dictionary of Historic Architecture

3.
George Gershwin
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George Jacob Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwins compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known, among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris as well as the opera Porgy and Bess. Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell and he began his career as a song plugger, but soon started composing Broadway theatre works with his brother Ira Gershwin, and Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, who refused him, after returning to New York City, he wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and the author DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess is now considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century, Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores until his death in 1937 from a malignant brain tumor – glioblastoma multiforme. Gershwins compositions have been adapted for use in films and for television. Many celebrated singers and musicians have covered his songs, Gershwin was of Russian Jewish and Ukrainian Jewish ancestry. His grandfather, Jakov Gershowitz, had served for 25 years as a mechanic for the Imperial Russian Army to earn the right of travel and residence as a Jew. His teenage son, Moishe Gershowitz, worked as a cutter for womens shoes. Moishe Gershowitz met and fell in love with Roza Bruskina, the daughter of a furrier in Vilnius. She and her family moved to New York due to increasing anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia, Moishe, faced with compulsory military service if he remained in Russia, moved to America as soon as he could afford to. Once in New York, he changed his first name to Morris, Gershowitz lived with a maternal uncle in Brooklyn, working as a foreman in a womens shoe factory. When he married Rose on July 21,1895, Gershowitz soon Americanized his name to Gershwine. Their first child was born on December 6,1896, Gershwin then moved his family into a second-floor apartment on Brooklyns Snediker Avenue. Their second son, soon to be renamed George, was born at there on September 26,1898 and his birth certificate identifies him as Jacob Gershwine, with the surname pronounced Gersh-vin in the Russian and Yiddish immigrant community. He was named after his grandfather, the one time Russian army mechanic, American practice by then was to give children a first and a middle name, but had no other. He changed the spelling of his name to Gershwin when he became a professional musician, George and Ira lived in many different residences, as their father changed dwellings with each new enterprise which he became involved in. Mostly, the boys grew up around the Yiddish Theater District and they frequented the local Yiddish theaters, with George occasionally appearing onstage as an extra

4.
Jerome Kern
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Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and his musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the musicals of his day. Although dozens of Kerns musicals and musical films were hits, only Show Boat is now regularly revived, songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Many of Kerns songs have been adapted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes, Kern was born in New York City, on Sutton Place, in what was then the citys brewery district. His parents were Henry Kern, a Jewish German immigrant, and Fannie Kern née Kakeles, at the time of Kerns birth, his father ran a stable, later he became a successful merchant. Kern grew up on East 56th Street in Manhattan, where he attended public schools and he showed an early aptitude for music and was taught to play the piano and organ by his mother, an accomplished player and teacher. In 1897, the moved to Newark, New Jersey. He wrote songs for the schools first musical, a show, in 1901. Kern left high school graduation in the spring of his senior year in 1902. In response, Kerns father insisted that his son work with him in business, Kern, however, failed miserably in one of his earliest tasks, he was supposed to purchase two pianos for the store, but instead he ordered 200. His father relented, and later in 1902, Kern became a student at the New York College of Music, studying the piano under Alexander Lambert and Paolo Gallico and his first published composition, a piano piece, At the Casino, appeared in the same year. Between 1903 and 1905, he continued his training under private tutors in Heidelberg, Germany. For a time, Kern worked as a rehearsal pianist in Broadway theatres, while in London, he secured a contract from the American impresario Charles Frohman to provide songs for interpolation in Broadway versions of London shows. He began to provide these additions in 1904 to British scores for An English Daisy, by Seymour Hicks and Walter Slaughter, in 1905, Kern contributed the song Howd you like to spoon with me. To Ivan Carylls hit musical The Earl and the Girl when the transferred to Chicago. He also contributed to the New York production of The Catch of the Season, The Little Cherub and The Orchid, Kern was much taken with the proprietors daughter, Eva Leale, who was working behind the bar. He wooed her, and they were married at the Anglican church of St. Marys in Walton on October 25,1910, the couple then lived at the Swan when Kern was in England

5.
Lil Hardin Armstrong
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Lil Hardin Armstrong was a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, singer, and bandleader. She was the wife of Louis Armstrong, with whom she collaborated on many recordings in the 1920s. Her compositions include Struttin with Some Barbecue, Dont Jive Me, Two Deuces, Knee Drops, Doin the Suzie-Q, Just for a Thrill, Clip Joint, and Bad Boy. Her composition Oriental Swing was heavily sampled to create Parov Stelars 2012 retro-song Booty Swing, Armstrong was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2014. She was born Lillian Hardin in Memphis, Tennessee, where she grew up in a household with her grandmother, Priscilla Martin, during her early years, Hardin was taught hymns, spirituals, and European classical music on the piano. She was drawn to music and later blues. Hardin was married to Louis Armstrong which she met in her band, Hardin first received piano instruction from her third-grade teacher, Violet White. Her mother then enrolled her in Mrs. Hooks School of Music and it was at Fisk University, a college for African Americans located in downtown Nashville, that Hardin was taught a more acceptable approach to the instrument. She received a diploma from Fisk, returning to Memphis in 1917, in August 1918, she moved to Chicago with her mother and stepfather. By then, she had become proficient in reading music, a skill that landed her a job as a sheet music demonstrator at Jones Music Store, the store had been paying Hardin $3 a week, but bandleader Lawrence Duhé offered $22.50. Knowing that her mother would not approve of her working in a cabaret, three weeks later, the band moved on to a better booking at the De Luxe Café, where the entertainers included Florence Mills and Cora Green. From there, the band moved up to the jewel of Chicagos nightlife, here the principal entertainers were Alberta Hunter and Ollie Powers, and there was no finer nightspot in Chicago. When King Olivers Creole Jazz Band replaced Duhés group at the Dreamland and she was with Oliver at the Dreamland in 1921, when an offer came for the orchestra to play a six-month engagement at San Franciscos Pergola Ballroom. At the end of that booking, Hardin returned to Chicago and she later studied at the New York College of Music, where she earned a postdoctorate degree in 1929. In Chicago, Hardin went back to work at the Dreamland, as pianist in an orchestra for Mae Brady, while there, she fell for Jimmie Johnson, a young singer from Washington, D. C. whom she married on August 22,1922. The marriage was short-lived, ending in divorce, in the meantime, the Oliver band returned from California and opened at the Royal Gardens, with Bertha Gonzales at the piano, but soon found itself back at the Dreamland, with Hardin at the piano. King Olivers band was enjoying success at the Dreamland when he sent for Louis Armstrong to join as second cornetist. Armstrong was beginning to make a name for himself in their hometown, New Orleans, and regarded Oliver as his mentor

6.
The New York Times
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The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the largest circulation among the metropolitan newspapers in the US. The New York Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation, following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The New York Times has long been regarded within the industry as a newspaper of record. The New York Times international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the New York Times International Edition, the papers motto, All the News Thats Fit to Print, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. On Sunday, The New York Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T, some other early investors of the company were Edwin B. Morgan and Edward B. We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or exactly wrong, —what is good we desire to preserve and improve, —what is evil, to exterminate. In 1852, the started a western division, The Times of California that arrived whenever a mail boat got to California. However, when local California newspapers came into prominence, the effort failed, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times in 1857. It dropped the hyphen in the city name in the 1890s, One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials it published alone. At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, in 1869, Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher. Tweed offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story, in the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned gradually from editorially supporting Republican Party candidates to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign, while this move cost The New York Times readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years. However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, the paper slowly acquired a reputation for even-handedness and accurate modern reporting, especially by the 1890s under the guidance of Ochs. Under Ochs guidance, continuing and expanding upon the Henry Raymond tradition, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, in 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began. The New York Times first trans-Atlantic delivery by air to London occurred in 1919 by dirigible, airplane Edition was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the section in 1946

Frank Harding
–
Frank Harding was a Tin Pan Alley music publisher, who was credited with creating the method of selling music called plugging. Harding paid singers to sing his songs in shops and beer halls to get them known. He was active from the 1880s through the 1920s and he published music that he wrote and also bought it from other songwriters. Stories about

1.
Cover of an 1894 piece of sheet music published by Frank Harding, Don't burn the cabin down by Nellie McGwire.

2.
Advertising page from 1894 from Don't Burn the Cabin Down.

Mezzanine (architecture)
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A mezzanine is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below. Mezzanines may serve a variety of functions. Industrial mezzanines, such as used in warehouses, may be temporary or semi-permanent structures. A mezzanine is a floor in a building which is open to the floor below. It is placed halfway

1.
The mezzanine of the Maastricht.

2.
View of the mezzanine in the lobby of the former Capitol Cinema, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

3.
A structural steel mezzanine used for industrial storage.

4.
Bilbao Metro station's mezzanine.

George Gershwin
–
George Jacob Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwins compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known, among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris as well as the opera Porgy and Bess. Gershwin studied piano under Charles H

1.
George Gershwin in 1937

2.
George Gershwin, c. 1935.

3.
Gershwin's mausoleum in Westchester Hills Cemetery

4.
Birthday party honoring Maurice Ravel in New York City, March 8, 1928. From left: Oskar Fried; Éva Gauthier; Ravel at piano; Manoah Leide-Tedesco; and George Gershwin.

Jerome Kern
–
Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and his musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators als

1.
Jerome Kern, 1930s

2.
Angela Lansbury sings "How'd you like to spoon with me?" in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946)

3.
Sheet music of "They All Look Alike", from Have a Heart.

Lil Hardin Armstrong
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Lil Hardin Armstrong was a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, singer, and bandleader. She was the wife of Louis Armstrong, with whom she collaborated on many recordings in the 1920s. Her compositions include Struttin with Some Barbecue, Dont Jive Me, Two Deuces, Knee Drops, Doin the Suzie-Q, Just for a Thrill, Clip Joint, and Bad Boy. Her compositio

1.
Lil Hardin Armstrong

The New York Times
–
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the lar

1.
Cover of The New York Times (November 15, 2012), with the headline story reporting on Operation Pillar of Defense.

2.
First published issue of New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851.

3.
The Times Square Building, The New York Times ‍ '​ publishing headquarters, 1913–2007